


world's end cafe

by dabblingDilettante



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: F/F, Future Fic, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 07:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8319637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dabblingDilettante/pseuds/dabblingDilettante
Summary: Love is powerful, Anthy knows.  No spell could make people jump like love.  It's nothing she's meant to deal in.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bygoshbygolly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoshbygolly/gifts).



> This does allude to canon-typical abuse. However, it is intended fully as optimistic, overall. Happy Femslash Ex and a happy Halloween (this has nothing to do with Halloween).

"Don't you think that's cruel, Himemiya?"

Anthy peered up from her tea. Lazy sun lit Utena's hair ablaze, the loudest thing in the room as she tapped a tiny spoon against the inside of the cup.  It was rare that Utena spent the time to think.  Someone like her had never learned what made a quiet moment and Anthy didn't plan to teach her.  She wasn't so kind.

Dust spun down in the light left to their dorm, unanswered question to bear.  Letting the moment go on was simple.  Eternity was funny that way.

And yet.  "What do you mean?" Anthy asked.  She didn't dislike Utena's noise.

"Saionji ... or one of his friends, I guess." She pursed her lips and tapped the spoon against the table. "Those guys who think its funny to hang up girls' love letters for everyone to mock."

Nails drew along the sides of Anthy's cup. "Oh yes." And with tea at her lips, she remembered the salt. "Incredibly so."

Utena took a long draft from her own with the grace of a bull. Keeping her cup pressed to her lips, Anthy watched tea fountain out Utena's mouth in a brilliant arc.

"Gracious," she murmured. "Did I get the sugar mixed up again?"

 

 

\---

 

 

Everyone knew Utena Tenjou. She was unmistakable. When faces melted as one in a witch's eyes, it was a rare boon. Outdated uniform. Self-assured walk for how little she actually thought about herself. Sporty and bright and loud. She knew the rules inside and out, enough to get away with her own tiny rebellion, and people admired her for it. Adored their prince.

Saionji had read the letter aloud to her. He had laughed and thrown it away, as she gently laughed at his cruel honesty.

"Girls like that are all the same," he said. Saionji wrapped his arms around her limp form. His hair hung down, flitting behind her glasses. Trying to fit into a sultry mask, his voice pitched down. "Nothing like you, Anthy."

Chu-chu clung to her hair as she dug through the trash. The letter was a gentle desperation - filled with a marked adoration. Vague words that could be applied to anyone or anything. Pretty ideas pulled from fairy tales. It was not the first time Saionji would receive such a letter, and it would not be the last.

Anthy dusted away the aphids. She heard Chu-chu's questioning squeak.

"My, my," she murmured. "This doesn't belong in the greenhouse disposal at all."

Faces were all the same in Anthy's eyes. But there were voices - styles - and a girl who fell upon Utena Tenjou like it was her right alone. The bob of her hair flickering as she leaned down to put a letter into a familiar locker. The same hands that wrappd around a girl she called a prince with such ease. Anthy had eyes enough to know the one person Utena Tenjou called a friend.

So someone left an anonymous confession on the school announcement board.

"It didn't mean much," the server explained.  The enraptured table stared, waiting for more.  She held her words under her tongue as she passed around the tea.  "Because adoration is not love."

Her customers nodded and fell back to studying chimes that decorated the ceiling above, as though such cruelty made sense.  Hindsight made any problem simple.

 

 

\----

 

 

The end of the world was overpopulated.

Skyscrapers and lamplight flooded every street, hardly a space to breathe without taking in electric emotion at every corner.  Green signposts marked streets, with names and letters that mixed together, impossible to find one's way back to the same place twice.  It took knowing where to go, and being needed there, to travel.

In all the cafes that grew their way at cracks in the road, there was no such thing as a regular.

Strangers sat down at rosewood tables, reading through outdated occult magazines and finished crossword puzzles as though they had not parked at the edge of everything.  They overlooked spiderwebs as a part of the charm, cooed over chipped porcelain, easily fell under spells that left them never to return.  But Anthy found herself with people regardless, who always came to her tiny shop with bright eyes and eager faces.

"What's the story today?"

People who failed to note the difference in sugar and salt, accident and malevolence.  Her shop flickered behind buildings and settled within trees - Anthy would walk out to snow one day and desert sun the next without batting an eye.  But they would still wander in without a hint of surprise to have found their way back.  Words like that carried a spell, trying to curl around her with strange intent.

Anthy hummed.  "What story do you mean?"

"You know!"  Laughter on the air hung to chimes through stagnant air, making them sing.  "Those princes, those girls trying to find each other!"

Years of being dead made it impossible to find a foothold.  But rising out of a grave, Anthy could crack concrete, growing anywhere she was willing to try.  People liked tea.  Living the chaos of strange worlds, that was a constant.  More than stories that changed day to day.  She picked pieces of memory, saturating milk till it turned a vibrant red.

"Mmm.  I suppose it sounds familiar."  She smiled, too little, too much, and leaned her cheek against her hand - the mirror image of failed princes.  "How do you remember it?"

 

 

\----

 

 

Akio was assured that Utena would win the duel. She didn't ask why. She didn't need to know.

But he marveled at one thing alone - "How did you draw her in?" Hanging over her, his face was the threat of shadow. Her eyes tracked away to the ceiling and the stars, till she could hear the fear in his voice.  "What did you do."

The lodgings were prepared a week in advance. It took a dozen unfocused eyes to allow a student to end up in a condemned building, far away from her peers. But the papers landed on his desk, and he signed without reading, an unfortunate oversight of the school board that no one would make a direct complaint about. It wasn't as though the Tenjou family would call to complain.

"Utena," came in the form of a drawn out whine, muffled by the cobridden hall. "Can't we hang out at my dorm?  It's so creepy around here."

"It's not that bad.  We cleaned it up ... I mean, it's really kind of cool once you get used to it!  Anthy was digging around and she found some weird festival leftovers from a few years back, and no one yells at me for being too loud anymore either."

"Gee, and I was wondering why they assigned miss living megaphone to the boonies."

"I wasn't that much louder than everyone else, you know."

"Come oooon, this can't be healthy!  And my roommates would love to hang out with you, too."

The door swung open, Utena with her bag slung over her shoulder, and her one friend. Anthy sat like a ghost at the table.  The two of them wouldn't notice her unless she wanted as much.

"I don't know," Utena said. A heavy sigh on her voice. "They always get so ... pushy? I mean, they're nice! But um ... I think I'd like some peace and quiet with my friends."

Friends. Anthy said, "Welcome home, Miss Utena."

Just what she had done - the two girls looked away from one another, and met Anthy's glassy stare.

And how she had done it - Utena grabbed Wakaba's hand.

"You two haven't met, have you?" She pulled Wakaba in, the two bouncing the few steps over, nervous eyes turned to bright oddity. "Anthy, this is Wakaba!" As though she couldn't hear the awkward laugh on the air. "She's like my best friend."

Anthy met Wakaba's eyes.

 _Like_ , on her lips.

Discomfort was a spell. A mere second, and it would fade, Utena's excitement overtaking the mood again. But that was all it needed.

"I'm like her princess," Wakaba interrupted, tossing her arms over Utena's shoulder. "Because Utena is my number one prince!"

"Wakaba." A red face coloring how she said her name.

"What, there's no need to be embarrassed about it!" She rubbed her face against Utena's hair, playful and all too aware of how awkward she was. "You said we're with friends!"

"Quite," Anthy said, closing her eyes. "You're very popular, Miss Utena. No need to feel embarrassed."

"Himemiya!"

She fell back on names as protest. Anthy's mouth twitched from its stoic smile, and she picked up a cup of tea, from somewhere. She always had some prepared in advance. Just in case. It burned her lips and drew away the laughter from her chest, till she could calmly stare at the two.

It didn't take a spell to entangle most people.

The only push it took was love.

 

 

\----

 

 

"Most of these princes aren't very good," today's guest said. "Forcing girls into relationships?  Using them as weapons?  There's supposed to be a code to this."

There were many regulars.  People were creatures of habit, in search of structure to every end.  She remembered them by brew and cup, temporary names they proferred for a glass, the taste of leaves and words melting together.  But this one - every day was a different choice.  The memory of yesterday came in the form of her boredom and inane requests.

"Is that so?" Anthy mused.  "Pray tell what it is?"

This one always had a response to make.  Her hair almost rose like a living being of its own, nested upon her head.  She stood up from her stool, hands pressed to the counter, bright eyes lighting up as she tried to find words for the confidence that filled her chest.  

"A prince always helps people in need!  A proper prince works together with the people they love to figure out how to fix anything."

Her shouting rippled through the tea in her cup, warping the rose print that encircled the bottom.  It was meant to sit alone in the back of her antique cabinet, too high for her to reach, out of sight.  There wasn't much choice if it was what ended up in her hand.  People who came so late after the lunch rush were inconvenient that way.  Her fingers curled around the handle, nails chipped from tripping, overwork, sport.

When Anthy left Ohtori, to find the strangest girl she'd ever met - she hadn't expected to find her in a body like this.

"Not everyone wants to be helped."  She sipped her tea, making her smile clear to her guest.

"Okay.  Okay, fair enough.  But it's nice to think about!  We can all be princes and drag each other out of the beast's maw."

"My, they must be terrible princes to be eaten so easily."

She stuck out her tongue at Anthy's laugh.  Familiar spells and awareness, all her words carried the knowledge of danger.  Far more careful than what she would have been.  The two of them had good reason, but she still tapped her spoon against the table over silence.

"There's that one you mentioned."  A pause that was less thought, and more - falling through time.  Frozen in space.  Anthy knew the feeling well.  "The girl with the sword.  She's exactly what I wish I could ... ah, I mean -" Her fingers curled up against her mouth.  Her voice dropped into a dead awareness.  "That's really childish, isn't it."

"Yes, it is," Anthy said.

Being blunt was the only gift she could give.  When her hair had fallen so dark, she faded into the background of the cafe.  So much less tall or imposing as Anthy remembered.  More scars, more marks, more memories.

It still turned a smile onto her face, as Utena said, "You don't need to be so honest."

 

 

\----

 

 

Questions about where she went to school.  Her home town.  What customers asked for drifted away from fairy tales and horror stories, and fell against a much less interesting veil.  Anthy drifted away from herself.  But guests asked.   _She_ asked.

 "What kind of uniform did you all have?"

Falling back in time was as simple as a word, trapped in the dredges of endless summer through any season.

Once, Utena remembered to ask.  "When do we change uniforms, again?"

"In the fall," Anthy said, matter of a fact. "It's on the calendar, Miss Utena."

Hair hung off the top bunk's side, Utena laying with her legs splayed up to the ceiling.  Fragments of magic flaked off the edge of her questions, quiet influence and confident pull at war with one another.  She didn't have a clue how to use it.  But her nature wouldn't affect Anthy.  She couldn't.

"Well yeah, just ... it seems like it's been a while." Flowers swayed in the breeze outside their window. "I guess school makes everything feel like it takes forever."

Anthy snapped a cookie in half for Chu-chu. "Quite."

"Maybe you could let your hair down," Utena said. "It's way warmer like that. You'd look nice."

"I have ear muffs," she answered.

"You do? Is it in that closet full of junk you got on campus?"

Curiosity leached into the air. She felt Utena moving closer, without shifting from the bed. Anthy put her hands down behind the table.

"At my brother's flat." Was all she should have said. But she went on, quiet musing.  "He doesn't like me hoarding too much."

Snails crawled in her pencil box, empty or filled with something new from day to day. Posters and inflatables trying to break their way out the closet. In every unused room, she had shoved away tiny things that no one else needed anymore, that Utena had run into a dozen times over. And she knew. Anthy hadn't considered how much Utena would know now, when it was always summer, and time fell stagnant and humid upon her. Anthy couldn't change to match her.

"Well," Utena hummed. "What he doesn't know won't hurt him, right?" And she grinned.

Staring up at her, Anthy heard the clock ticking down in agonizing beats.

Staring across the counter, timer deep in her chest, she was still waiting for it to run out.

 

 

\----

 .

  

"A lunch for my beloved Utena!"

What cute meant was a matter that confounded Anthy. In accordance with Wakaba's definition, it meant - small. Orderly. Food cut into the attempts of flowers, for what should not be eaten. It was neat, unlike Utena's attempts that devolved into instant food and what could be dispensed from a machine. It was made by proper human hands. So it went. Witches weren't meant to cook.

Anthy watched from afar for an eternity. The two of them in the classroom. The two of them rolling down the hill outside. The two of them hanging over bridges in poised youthful absurdity. There was no one who managed to fluster Utena quite so easily as Wakaba, unrestrained and excited.

Girls stared at Utena.  That was a fact of their tiny world. Sighing to themselves, they spoke of her as though a mystery of their school, about giving her letters. But none of them tried to reach out like Wakaba to her - like her to Anthy. As though every girl knew it was a matter of being chosen. Exceptions in the field of normalcy had to be studied.  There was no way to use them otherwise.

Though Anthy's questions - trying to thread together the history that formed them - rarely earned sensible answers.

Full of 'ums' and 'ers,' Utena hung in the doorway. No assured words. Only thoughts and vague memories, "I think," alongside every word.

Perhaps the first time they spoke was in class. The two of them fumbling under the same tutor in classes they always landed in together. Or it was when Wakaba dropped a ball that Utena lost on her head. She couldn't remember if it was Wakaba who taught her the rules of tennis or someone else. It could have been that they were assigned as mismatched roommates once upon a time.  Maybe it was family friends, though she could not remember if the Shinoharas had ever met her parents before -

"Well," Utena said. "It doesn't matter much." She leaned her head back against the frame. "We're friends now. That's all that really matters to me. I don't care how we met, as long as I know her now."

There were pictures on Utena's desk. Fluid to the moment, it was rare that she acknowledged them. Today, it was one of Wakaba hanging over her, both of them in the same clothes, the photographer unknown. Anthy flipped it face down.

"How nice," she said.

 

 

\----

 

 

When black roses started to bloom, Utena insisted on walking home with Anthy.

"It's not safe," she'd say. "And if you've got my back, I'm safer too, you know."

It made it harder to make her way to Akio. Flicker away with quiet whispers for Mikage. When Utena was always in danger, just by being here, Anthy didn't see the benefit. When Utena walked to the observatory without her so easily, Anthy couldn't sympathize. 

But it did make part of her job easier.

Wakaba stared after them.  And as the walls of revolution wore down, she clung to stark walls growing against her. Anthy had seen it a thousand times before. She had felt it.

But one day it flipped.  One day, she filled in the reason - till it was Utena staring after her.

"I've never seen her like this before," came as a distant murmur.  "It feels like ... she's shining." 

Witches had many spells.  Hiding away in quiet nooks, they could barricade against the world's threats.  A girl ran home to repair the glamour she had woven.  And Anthy knew.

So she took the wooden hair clip.

"How cruel," Akio said.

Love was cruel, she would say, but - she had let him know enough by now. Drawn as scars from her skin to his. In the dead smile she gave him as she kissed his cheek.

No one had chosen Wakaba. Not The End Of The World. Not Saionji. Not Utena.

No one but herself.

Hate was nothing new.  Witches had plenty to give, with every sword that could find them, overrun.  No spell made people break like love.

Anthy expected that.

"But -"

Utena hesitating.

"It's Wakaba."

Anthy never imagined that.

Couldn't comprehend -

"I'll save you," almost too quiet on the wind, over Wakaba's anger, and hate, all her agony and loneliness and rejection.  Over the betrayal.  "You're one of my dearest friends."

Utena pulled through the pain and held onto Wakaba's hand.  Anthy stared.  In the field of forgotten bodies, no one looked to her.  A useless rose bride.  A witch.  

When it came to love, there wasn't much she could do.

 

 

\----

 

 

Wakaba took to her brother well.  "Everyone did," Anthy explained.

Today, Utena's hair was brilliant red, spilled along a table.  She came in, too close to close, tired stumbling.  Anthy surprised herself.  She caught her.  Guided her out of muddy shoes, set down hot chocolate with too much milk, energy buzzing beneath her skin.  Overlooking eternity, the two of them stood on solid ground.  Talking.

"Is that bad?" Utena mumbled.

"Yes."  Anthy took a deep breath.  "He was a man of great influence and power.  Some might have called him evil."

"Someone should have told her ..."

Long ago.  In a place she'd never truly been, the ghost of a person walking on glass, a witch had a room alone with a girl who didn't matter.

"The witch couldn't risk allowing a bystander to know."  Anthy's mouth was dry.  "It had been years since she felt fear."

"Why?"

"Because love is powerful.  No one can escape the grip of love," she said.  "She could use that.  A witch can twist the path and set water boiling below.  But if the inhabitant knows to leave the pot ... there's nothing she can do."

And she knew the danger in admitting so much.

Akio had spirited Utena away, again.  His hand along her shoulders was another stab, making Anthy's fingers tense and writhe against her skirt.  He was showing Utena how to cook.  All for the sake of her making a delicious meal for her dear friends.  Through her lenses, she could watch.  But she could see his face, then, and how he knew, and how he would linger over her with fingers through her skin to ask her of jealousy and envy.  So she stared into space instead.  Anthy could never have done anything to stop it.

"Do you do anything at this school?" Wakaba asked.  The words jolted through the room.  "Utena was looking for pictures of you.  She was really disappointed."

Wakaba's stare said too much, caught upon her hook.  But she didn't spit hate at Anthy.  There was no rage or envy.  The cheerful curve of her eyes burned down to quiet weariness, and the mirror of a shallow smile.  Anthy met hers.

"Oh?  How unfortunate."

Caught between the overwhelming emptiness of her brother's observatory and her quiet weed of a cafe, Anthy closed her eyes.  Vines wrapped along her fingers - hands.  People.  She didn't wear glasses anymore, but the scars cut along the bridge of her nose, the hollow of her cheek.  Memories of the impossible hung heavy in her head.

In one.  "Do me one favor."  Wakaba Shinohara said, "Don't hurt her."

The other.  "You know."  Utena Tenjou said, "That's sorta kind."

 

 

\----

 

 

Wakaba Shinohara had many friends.

In the days it took to leave - the years - Anthy watched.  She was no prince, but she'd never met anyone who could have been.

As she advanced through Ohtori, girls looked up to her.  Chipper and quick, she had a sporty edge without any source.

"Shouldn't we do something about that green house?"

People hung over her as Wakaba leaned out the window.  Blank eyes not quite reflecting the ruined greenery.

"Isn't that supposed to be the student council's job?  Reconstruction and recycling, stuff like that."

Rust seethed through the bars, mist coating every unbroken window.  Birds flitted along the edges, makeshift nesting made along low-hanging bars.  It was overgrown, an eyesore of the campus, out of control to burst apart with unbidden life.

Wakaba didn't talk about it.  Anthy watched, days in and out, for some hint of notice.  Any memory.

"You guys have too much free time."  Wakaba pushed them away.  "Since when have we had a student council that did anything?"

"Yeah, you're right."

"Last I heard, there was someone trying to fundraise for a car show ... like any of us could afford that."

The endless streets of Ohtori shrunk down to little more than empty halls, less and less new blood for Akio to use.  As the school rotted, people woke up from the spell.  As it shrunk, people realized they wanted to leave, and never return.  Floors sank into the ground, stairs rippling down themselves, to fit a smaller student body.  Anthy walked the halls till she could walk from one end to the other, and look back to see where she had come from.

There was no reason to come to Ohtori, people said.  It was past its prime, people said.  Her brother sat in his observatory, more and more out of touch, till his elevator could no longer reach the ground.  His voice rang on every phone, desperate to reach.  But though she could not wrest the roots from her skin, he could not touch her.  And that was something.

Not enough.  Nothing could be enough.  But it made it easier to walk through open doors.

"Hello."

Wakaba always looked young.  Phone in hand, she fumbled over the device, unfamiliar with burgeoning adulthood.  She didn't acknowledge Anthy.  It was wrong numbers and frustration bleeding into her ears, and Anthy stood statue still.  Trying to find what had made another stare so much.

Ohtori's parking lot cracked over the years.  The artisan paving lost its mystique under sunheat and awkward drivers.  Paint ran over paint, old signs against concrete, and casual graffiti decorated unwashed corners.  It was as overgrown with memory as her greenhouse, shattered under the weight of open doors.  The sun setting against their fall uniform, Wakaba stood between sharp black and green - silhouette cutting shadow into the ground.  Dark jacket.  Pants under her skirt.  Her hair bounced when she let it down.  Anthy didn't know this girl and yet, she could not stop herself from smiling.

Hands twitching, something caught at the edge of Wakaba's mouth.  "What?" she mumbled, unsure as to what she was acknowledging.

"I wanted to apologize," Anthy said.

Her eyes flickered back.  Glazing over her, but Wakaba tried, and managed to fix her gaze around where Anthy stood.  "Oh, sorry, I was trying to call someone ... ugh, she never picks up!  She has some nerve."

Anthy stood at the edge of Wakaba's shadow.  At the brink, her heels lifted, teetering dangerous with curiosity.  And in a step, she was at her side, staring around Wakaba's shoulder, the list of numbers in her hand.  Spells came to her too easily, melting through icy defense.  Breaking into another person's world was difficult.  But for a moment -

"Who is she?"

She could exist for that long.

Wakaba's mouth hung open, as she sized up the witch at her side.  But she huffed.

"So I knew this girl.  She was my best friend, alright?  And one day, she had to transfer out of nowhere because apparently her auntie decided she didn't want her dear niece living apart from family anymore."  Arms folded, lips pursed, Wakaba leaned against Anthy without a single thought.  She couldn't move.  "Right out of nowhere!  After all the trouble we got into.  But here's the weird part."  And she leaned against Anthy's shoulder, whispering some dark secret.  "No one remembers her.  Not even the teachers who used to get on her case.  They say all the troublemakers melt together, but that was my ... my ..."

"Your what?" Anthy murmured.

Wakaba's face crumpled.  Her teeth grinding together, her eyes closed, she managed - "My prince?"  The word hissed along ice and she shook her head.  "It sounds stupid now.  But ... it was important back then.  It meant ..."

"The world," Anthy agreed.

"I was gonna say a lot, but sure."  She paused and Anthy could feel the burn of Wakaba's stare peeling away skin.  "...You know.  You look kind of familiar.  Are you a student around here?"

"I used to be.  A long time ago."  A smile grew along Anthy's face as she pulled away.  "You reminded me of someone, but I suppose I was mistaken."

"Were you looking for a friend?  I could help you out.  I know just about everyone on this campus, nowadays!"

"No," Anthy lied - in halves.  "I hope you find yours, again."

Wakaba Shinohara was the most normal girl Anthy had the misfortune to meet.  Wrenches and confusion and nonsense, and all the influence of someone who knew how to walk through doors.  The phone rang, flipping between her jumpy hands before she managed to answer, and Anthy walked away.

"Hello, this is Wakaba!"

Witches knew all about hurting people.  It took one to know one, deep down.  But they could always find what they were looking for.

"Utena!  How many times do I have to say you're not supposed to yell into a phone!"

 

 

\----

 

 

There were worlds where princesses gave up on waiting for their prince.  Where witches would rise and destroy the beautiful waiting memory to cast the world into unimaginable shadow.

Everything would end.  But Anthy found the surprise.  The next book in the story.  Another thread to follow.  A new world to jump to.

In that destruction, she found what she'd forgotten she was looking for.

Every day, the bells of her shop would ring.  She heard marketers trying to sell her new tea leaves from all over the world.  Rumors snuck in about new health code, building demands, tepid traps that could never keep up.  Friends and lovers and enemies and people who needed seconds to hide their face away from the street.  New discoveries, strange people, familiar things.  None of it was hers and that was freeing.

"Remember when I was a kid? And all I could talk about was being a prince."

Some voices stood out.  A leaf hairpin held back pink hair, cut into a bob dancing around her chin. Her partner's hair stood cropped short against her head, pricking up in every direction. It was the smile between them that brought stares.

"And how I was always dropping hints about my dear prince?"  Wakaba Shinohara elbowed her girlfriend in the gut.

"What? But you were always talking about those boys and -"

"You don't seriously think I liked them, did you?"

Anthy wasn't good with faces.  Staring at the two of them, laughing together, not a hint of recognition in their eyes.

Some people would never be a part of her world.  For most, visiting the edge of everything was a simple vacation, and nothing more.

At night, when guests filtered down to the people who needed a place to be rather than a curiosity to visit, Anthy learned how to speak.  How to weave back together everything she had unraveled.  Thread came together between her teeth, stringing her heart strong inside her, as she told stories.

"The witch traveled far, following broken threads in search of a princess who broke free.  Pieces of the mask she wore littered the world, and one day the witch realized.  The girl she was looking for no longer existed."

Anthy felt warm skin against hers.  Thorns clicked together, awkward edges cutting into one another.  Familiar wounds stood safe together.  Her guest.  Her curious questioner, the girl with endless sparkling eyes and dozens of scars.  Anthy picked and chose what mattered this far along.  After the end of the world, anything could be real.  It was no matter of waiting to lose.

Utena said, "So she never found her?"

"I never said that."

**Author's Note:**

> Since you gave free rein in your letter, I just tried to do a piece that would involve multiple relationships - wanting to acknowledge these girls' feelings and personal significance. Fairy tale endings are bleak or too perfect, so I tried to make something of Anthy making an end and start with her own hands of what mattered most. Of what convinced her to survive. In my heart, I am punting Akio of /so/ many cliffs, as is Anthy, settling happily on a cliffside overlooking an eternity she has no interest in.
> 
> Also major thanks to [plumtea](http://archiveofourown.org/users/PlumTea) for aiding me in ensuring my messy writing was gift-worthy, a genuine anxiety lifted from my heart.


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